


A Wild ????? Appeared!

by Scrawlers



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Pokemon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 01:18:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17033624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: While exploring anomalies along the coast of Cinnabar Island, Keith and Lotor are attacked by a mysterious creature. When they awake, they find themselves in a city full of bizarre architecture and warped physics, and no idea of how to get home.





	A Wild ????? Appeared!

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a little while ago, but in light of Tumblr being . . . Tumblr, I've decided to archive everything here, just in case.

The sky above Keith when he opened his eyes was less  _sky_ and more  _spots_ of sky interspersed with chunks of ocean, patches of long grass, and the occasional concrete slab from a city street. He watched as a cloud drifted across a patch of blue, and bumped into an upside-down stop sign, warping around it as a kabutops skeleton poked its head out from a patch of tall grass just beside it. The kabutops skeleton, dangling upside-down as it was, looked in his direction before retreating back into the sanctuary of the tall grass it was in.

Keith closed his eyes, and held them closed for five seconds. When he opened them again, the cloud had finished passing around the stop sign, and had floated into a large rock, which was in the process of absorbing it.

That was enough for Keith.

He sat bolt upright, but the view  _around_ him wasn’t any better than the view  _above_ him. He was lying on what looked to be a mostly whole city street; there were buildings lining the street on either side of him, but they weren’t . . .  _whole,_ they weren’t  _normal_ , they weren’t any buildings he recognized. One of the buildings had the roof of a Pokémon Center, which was fine, but the bottom half was a thick cluster of trees. Another building had a bus stuck through the side halfway up, and rows of limp arms where the windows should be. Another had linoleum flooring on what was probably the sixth floor, and Keith knew this because there was no outer wall where the six floor would be. Instead, the flooring continued out, suspended in mid-air, so that it covered half the street.

Beneath his breath, but with intense feeling, Keith said, “What the  _hell._ ”

The worst part was that somehow, this wasn’t entirely surprising. He had seen things like this before, a year ago when he’d first started investigating the Quintessence Foundation. Not the buildings, or the street, or the undead pokémon skeletons, but the sky—the sky was often reduced to a patchwork of bizarre patterns near where the Quintessence Foundation carried out their experiments. It was part of what spurred him to investigate them to begin with—part of what led him to ignore Kolivan’s warnings to “lay low” and “wait for directives” and “stay in his lane.” It was part of what led him to Lotor.

For the second time since waking up just a few minutes ago, Keith’s eyes widened, his heart seizing in his chest.

“Lotor! Hey—” Keith turned, scrambling halfway to his feet in the same motion, and breathed a sigh when he caught sight of Lotor standing a few paces away. He smiled. “Good. You’re all right.”

Lotor had his hands in the pockets of his long coat, and was staring up at the bizarre excuse for a sky with an inscrutable expression. But he looked over at Keith from the corner of his eyes when Keith called his name, and his lips curled in a wry smile.

“Relatively,” he answered. “I’m glad you’re awake.”

“Yeah. Me, too . . . I guess.” Keith stood the rest of the way and swiped the dirt from his pants before he closed the distance between them. “What the hell is this? What happened? How’d we . . .” He frowned, his jaw clenched. “We were on Cinnabar Island.”

“We  _were_ , yes.” Lotor watched him for a moment, speculatively, before he asked, “Do you remember what happened just before we awoke here?”

Keith scowled at the ground beneath his feet. The number three was etched just beneath his shoe. “We were investigating the east coast because people reported sightings that sounded a lot like what the Quintessence Foundation was doing. We didn’t see anything for the first hour we were there, and then . . .”

“And then?”

“That . . . thing.” Keith looked up at Lotor, who was watching him with the same unreadable expression. “What was that thing? An ultra beast?”

Lotor shook his head, and looked away again. “Regrettably, I have no idea. But I suspect our distorted  _friend_ is the reason we’ve found ourselves here.”

“Distorted friend” was one way of putting it. Even now, when Keith tried to recall what the thing had looked like, he . . . couldn’t, not really. Every time he tried pain seared through his head, and he felt like his eyes were burning. But he remembered . . . the air had distorted around the creature, which had changed shape so rapidly it was like it was several creatures at once. And its cry . . . it was unlike anything Keith had ever heard before, pokémon or ultra beast or otherwise. Keith didn’t know what it was, but if it had dumped them  _here_ , “friend” was the last thing he’d call it.

“Well, that thing might’ve dumped us here, but that won’t stop us getting out,” Keith said. He plunged his hand into the bag he kept slung around his waist and palmed his talonflame’s pokéball, and as a smile flitted across Lotor’s face, he tossed her ‘ball into the air.

As she always did, Sunspot materialized from her pokéball with a piercing cry, arcing a half-circle through the air before she swooped back to land on Keith’s raised arm. But while she normally landed with an attentive, though still friendly, presence, this time she gripped his arm with her talons more tightly than usual, twitching her head this way and that as she ruffled her feathers in agitation.

“Hey, what’s . . . it’s okay,” Keith said, figuring that it was a little too late to tell her nothing was wrong. He stroked his fingers down Sunspot’s back, and that seemed to calm her only slightly. “Nothing to worry about. We’re gonna find a way out of here. Think you can do some recon for us?”

Sunspot ducked her head, but loosed an affirmative trill before she spread her wings. Keith raised his arm as she took to the air, both he and Lotor watching as she swooped around a low-hanging taxi and tried to gain altitude.

She had just drawn level with its back tires when her head smacked against—something. Keith wasn’t sure what. One moment Sunspot was rising into one of the few patches of normal sky above them, and the next something like a shockwave rippled through it, accompanied by the sound of a loud  _smack_ , and Sunspot was sent rocketing back down into the street with a wounded and dazed cry.

Keith bolted to her side, dropping to his knees as he came beside her, and she struggled to stand up. He braced her chest with one hand, and ran his other gently over her head. He felt his heart splinter when she winced. “Hey, you’re okay—what happened? What did you—”

“Erebus!”

Keith turned in time to see Lotor catch his noivern’s pokéball, said dragon materializing in the air beside him. As always, Erebus took a moment to butt his head against Lotor’s cheek in an affectionate gesture, yet though Lotor smiled and stroked his hand along Erebus’ head in greeting, he let that last for only a moment before he grew serious again, and pointed toward the patch of sky where Sunspot had crashed.

“Boomburst.”

Keith shielded Sunspot as Erebus fired a Boomburst at the spot Lotor indicated. The attack slammed into the same patch of sky that Sunspot had crashed into, and aside from the resounding  _crack_ that made Keith’s ears throb, ripples similar to the ones that Sunspot had caused cascaded through the sky. The patches of long grass and objects sticking out of disjointed squares shook, and the ripples spread out farther than Keith could see.

“Well,” Lotor said, a heavy sigh thick in his voice, “it appears as though we won’t be traveling by sky. Thank you, Erebus. Return.”

Keith gritted his teeth, but in the interest of not worrying his already agitated talonflame any more, he forced a smile as he turned back to her. “You too, Sunspot. Get some rest.”

Sunspot crooned in gratitude, and bumped her head gently against Keith’s knee as he raised her pokéball to return her. Once she was safely inside (and her ‘ball was stored safely in his bag), Keith got to his feet again, and met Lotor’s eyes.

“If we can’t search by sky, guess that means we’re going on foot,” he said. “We have to reach the edge of the city at some point.”

“It’s as good a plan as any,” Lotor said, and he flashed Keith a smirk. “Besides, I think it’ll be  _interesting_ to see what sort of home our little  _friend_ has created, don’t you? I can only imagine there must be so much more to this place than just this charming street.”

Keith snorted. “‘Charming.’ Right. Well, come on; let’s see what we’ve got.”

What they had was a city that made as much sense as the sky above him. While the street they were on appeared mostly normal, save for the random numbers, letters, and odd symbols wedged into the concrete, other streets weren’t nearly so lucky. Some had patches of water, or small streams running down them; others had objects jammed into them, and not as if someone had drilled them into the concrete, either. No, it was more like the concrete warped around to simply allow for the vending machine that jutted halfway out of it, unusable but still very plainly  _there_ , as if it had been since the start of time.

Many of the buildings had doors, but none of them opened no matter how hard Keith or Lotor tried. At one point they saw what looked like a clefairy standing between a building and a line of hot pink shrubs, but when Keith accidentally kicked a rock near his foot, the clefairy dissipated in a distorted pattern, and the rock Keith kicked turned into a pair of Black Sunglasses, which he pocketed more out of bemusement than anything.

Hours later, he wished that seeing a clefairy melt into distorted air was the worst thing that had happened.

Keith guessed it had been hours, anyway. Neither his nor Lotor’s PokéNav Pluses were functioning, and since there wasn’t really a sun, there was no way to tell how much time had passed. But they walked long enough that Keith’s feet started to hurt, his shoulders feeling stiff. Yet no matter how many streets they turned down, or how many fences growing out of half-sunken trucks they climbed over, they never got anywhere even close to city limits.

Keith didn’t want to say it out loud—didn’t want to even  _think_ it—but considering what had happened when Sunspot and Erebus had tested the sky, he was beginning to wonder if there  _were_ city limits.

“We should rest,” Lotor said after a time, and when Keith looked back at him, he gestured to his left. “That park over there looks suitable.”

“Park” was a generous word for it. It was a circular plaza with a defunct fountain in the middle, and sparse patches of grass here or there along the cobblestone. The whole thing was surrounded by more excuses for buildings, though, which at least allowed it some shade. Keith sighed, and nodded.

“Yeah. Sounds good.” He forced a small smile, and added, “We can let our pokémon out, too. Give them a chance to stretch.”

Lotor returned his smile in kind. “As well as offer extra pairs of eyes in case we aren’t the only ones present.”

This time, Keith’s smile came more naturally. “Exactly.”

The park, at least, was big enough for them all. Keith’s charizard, Mars, settled down by the fountain after he was told he couldn’t fly, stretching out along the cobblestone. Nyx, his midday lycanroc, immediately set to patrolling, her blue fur standing on end, her tail held straight out. Sunspot immediately flew to the top of the fountain, preening her feathers, but casting anxious looks over them all every few seconds. Luxite and Avalanche, his aegislash and tyranitar, both stood guard at opposite ends of the plaza without even needing to be told, Luxite changing forms every few minutes as if unable to decide which one was most appropriate. Aside from Mars, Keith’s pyroar, Red, was the only one of his pokémon who seemed unruffled; she growled a little when she first emerged from her ‘ball, but otherwise walked around to lay by the fountain as well, exchanging one  _look_ with Mars before she rested her head on her paws.

Lotor’s pokémon were in similar states. Erebus once again gave Lotor his customary nuzzle, yet then set to flitting about the plaza, unable to keep still. Alkahest, his metagross, joined Luxite and Avalanche on watch, floating back and forth across the plaza as it fought to decide where it should stay. His silvally, Dæmon, joined Nyx on patrol, as did his rapidash, Arion, her dark mane whipping as she galloped through the plaza. His spiritomb, Djinn, seemed to have his own plans; he disappeared and reappeared at various points around the plaza seemingly at random, at one point ending up on top of the fountain with Sunspot. And Loki, Lotor’s zoroark, flipped through illusionary disguises so quickly it made Keith feel a bit sick to watch at first, until Loki finally settled on the form of a small boy with light brown skin and white hair, and eyes eerily similar to Keith’s own.

“Do you have to do that?” Keith asked.

Loki tilted his head, as if he didn’t understand the question, before he smiled and ran to jump into the fountain. (Which Keith was glad wasn’t filled with water, given how all three of his fire-types had chosen to lay by or on it.)

“If he’s relaxed enough to play, that’s likely a good sign for the rest of us. He would have blanketed the plaza in an illusion if there was an immediate threat,” Lotor said.

“Yeah. True.”

Keith crossed the plaza to take a seat by Mars, leaning back against his warm side. (Mars, ever accommodating, shifted a bit to allow Keith a more comfortable seat.) Lotor remained standing, eyes scanning over the plaza and all their pokémon doing the rounds, and after a moment of watching Lotor watch everyone else, Keith said, “They’ve got it under control. You can come sit with us, if you want.”

Lotor looked to him, and smiled. “Thank you.”

He sat down beside Keith, similarly leaned back against Mars. He wasn’t so close that their shoulders touched, but he was close enough so that it would be easy for them to, if either one of them shifted. Keith remained where he was. He looked out at the distorted sky, and after a moment, said, “We probably need to figure out what to do.”

“Haven’t we already?” Lotor asked, and Keith glanced to his side to see Lotor watching him with a bemused smile. “We’re searching for the exit.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t look like we’re gonna find that any time soon,” Keith said. He looked ahead again, watching as a massive seaking flipped out of one of the patches of water in the sky, and landed in one of the patches of tall grass. “So we need to figure out what to do in the meantime. To survive.”

“Hmm.” Lotor was quiet a moment. “I would expect our ticket out would be to find our little friend. If this is a pocket dimension it created, then surely defeating it would break the binding.”

“Probably,” Keith agreed. “But in the meantime we need things like food to keep going. We don’t know how long we’ll be here; what we have now could run out. I saw some bushes with berries, but they weren’t many, and we don’t know if they’ll still be there tomorrow.” He paused, then turned to face Lotor and asked, “Why aren’t you concerned?”

“Why should I be?” Lotor asked, without missing a beat. Keith opened his mouth to answer—to point out that  _having enough food to eat_  was a pretty big concern—but before he could, Lotor said, “You’re here.”

It took Keith a few seconds to realize that his mouth was still open, anything he was going to say having died stillborn in his throat. He closed his mouth, and turned back around to look out at the sky again, trying to shrug away the awkward feeling that had settled around his shoulders.

“Yeah, well,” he said, and cleared his throat to ease the gruffness out of it. “We should still figure out a plan. We need to find a way to hunt that . . .  _thing_ down, and we need to work out what to do in case it takes a while.”

“I agree,” Lotor said, “but you had a fair point earlier when you noticed that our pokémon have things under control for the time being. There is no harm in taking a moment to rest.”

“True.”

“And look there,” Lotor leaned closer so that their shoulders touched, a few strands of his white hair brushing against Keith’s cheek, and pointed at the sky. “It seems that seaking has nearly made it back into the water.”

Despite the situation, Keith smiled. He brushed his pinky finger overtop Lotor’s, and when Lotor curled his finger around Keith’s, Keith rested his head on Lotor’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Keith agreed. “Looks like it.”


End file.
